Powell, Sunbury headline safety rankings

According to the website Elite Personal Finance, the City of Powell is the safest municipality in which to live in Ohio. The Village of Sunbury checks in at No. 6 on the list of the top 30 municipalities in the state. The survey is based on crime statistics from 2016.

The City of Powell has added another distinction to its growing list of accolades — safest place to live in Ohio.

According to a ranking released this week by Elite Personal Finance, a website featuring a network of industry experts focused on passing personal finance knowledge to millennials, Powell was ranked as the safest municipality in Ohio in which to reside. The ranking is based on a crime score calculated by dividing the total number of violent crimes in the municipality by the population and multiplying that number by 1,000.

Using 2016 crime statistics, Powell was one of 13 Ohio municipalities appearing on the top 30 list for 2017 that reported no violent crimes, earning the top ranking due to it being the most populated of the bunch. Powell has a population of 13,273.

The website notes municipalities with populations under 3,000 or those that didn’t report crimes to the FBI were excluded from the list.

Powell Police Chief Gary L. Vest, whose department plays a vital role in keeping the peace, was pleased with the ranking and vowed to continue working to keep Powell a “great place to live and work.”

“We are blessed with a great community, great schools, and the strong economic environment of central Ohio,” he said. “I am hopeful that we will be recognized as a safe community for many years into the future.”

Powell wasn’t the only Delaware County municipality to crack the top 10 as the Village of Sunbury was ranked the sixth safest place to live in the state. Sunbury, with a population of 5,242, reported no violent crimes in 2016.

“I know with all of the crime, terrorism, and mass shootings that we see in the world, safety for our community is something that is always front and center,” Sunbury Mayor Tommy Hatfield said. “In Sunbury, we are blessed with a tight-knit community where people look out for each other. We also have a good police department where the men and women of that department take their jobs seriously.”

Elite Personal Finance has been releasing its lists of safest places to live in every state since 2015. Neither Powell or Sunbury appeared on the top 30 list in 2016, but Powell was ranked 14th overall in 2015.

While the City of Delaware doesn’t appear on the overall top 30 list, it is one of the top 30 safest cities in the state with a population between 30,000 and 100,000, earning rankings of 28th (2017), 22nd (2016), and 23rd (2015) over the past three years. Delaware’s population is 38,658.

The population figures were provided by Elite Personal Finance. To view the list of safest places to live in Ohio, visit www.elitepersonalfinance.com/safest-places-ohio/.

According to the website Elite Personal Finance, the City of Powell is the safest municipality in which to live in Ohio. The Village of Sunbury checks in at No. 6 on the list of the top 30 municipalities in the state. The survey is based on crime statistics from 2016.

Contact Joshua Keeran at 740-413-0904. Follow him on Twitter @KeeranGazette.